£billions wasted in NHS black hole (Image: Getty)
More than £15 billion of taxpayers’ money has been written off since Covid, with billions more unaccounted for, as Oxford scientists warn of a financial black hole inside Britain’s public health system.
This includes £billions wasted on tests, medicines and vaccines which were never used and have either been thrown away or beyond their shelf life. It also includes a spiralling multi billion pound bill for a new bio security building which is nearly five years behind schedule and expected to cost £3.2 billion over six times the original price.
The investigation by Oxford University experts Prof Carl Heneghan and Dr Tom Jefferson focuses on the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) and concludes the true scale of losses, stockpile failures and overspending has never been fully revealed or understood by the public.
Drawing together official accounts, audit reports and parliamentary findings from the years since 2020, the researchers say the figures show a pattern of huge emergency spending followed by weak controls, missing records and massive write-offs.
They show that tens of billions were committed during the Covid pandemic, and more than £15 billion of it has already had to be written off – with further billions still under question. This is more than the annual budget of many government departments, is enough to build multiple major hospitals or could have funded huge numbers of operations, staff and frontline services.
discarded masks – Covid (Image: Getty)
Read more: UK watchdog fumes over ‘unacceptable’ £15bn waste on unused Covid PPE
Read more: Labour’s £3bn plan to move science labs from UK village ‘a hammer blow’ to lo…
The biggest losses, they show, come from pandemic supplies.
According to government accounts nearly £15 billion worth of PPE, medicines, tests and vaccines have been written off after being bought in large quantities during the crisis but never used, later judged unnecessary, or allowed to expire in storage. Much of the stock has since been destroyed, sold at a loss or stored at further cost.
In real terms, the money lost is enough money to fund the salaries of tens of thousands of NHS nurses for years.
On top of that, auditors found that £3.3 billion of stock transferred from NHS Test and Trace to the UK Health Security Agency could not be properly tracked, with incomplete records and missing inventory. MPs have described the situation as: “completely staggering” accounting failings.
In one example, around £1.7 billion in emergency preparedness spending was written off between 2023-2024, including more than £1 billion worth of Covid vaccines that expired unused after being ordered in large quantities to avoid shortages.
Critics say the figures show how decisions taken during the crisis continue to cost taxpayers years later.
Prof Heneghan and Dr Jefferson argue that once programmes reach this size, they become almost impossible to stop, even when problems become obvious.
New biosecurity lab already overspent (Image: Getty)
They also point to the soaring cost of the government’s new biosecurity science hub in Harlow, Essex, one of the flagship projects linked to the UKHSA.
The site was originally expected to cost about £530 million, but the latest estimates suggest the bill has climbed to around £3.2 billion, with completion planned during the 2030s.
Around £400 million has already been spent – yet no buildings have been completed.
The scientists say the project shows how public spending can spiral once a scheme becomes too big politically to cancel, even when costs multiply.
The Taxpayers’ Alliance has warned that the agency’s finances point to wider problems across government, describing the situation as an example of “financial and institutional dysfunction” with weak oversight of huge budgets.
The scientists warn that financial accountability becomes blurred because organisations are reorganised, ministers change and senior officials move on before projects are finished.
The UK Health Security Agency itself has already had several leadership changes since it was created during the pandemic, making it harder to identify who is responsible for past decisions.
“This analysis shows UK taxpayers are funding a public health system prone to overspending, weak scrutiny and projects that grow far beyond their original plans. Unless financial controls improve, the UK will repeat the same cycle – with billions committed in the name of safety, only for the true cost to emerge years later, long after the money has disappeared.”
Professor Heneghan and Dr Jefferson said “ while funding is consistently available for grand, high-profile projects, it mysteriously dries up when it comes to the basics of healthcare. In our view, this reflects systemic financial mismanagement rather than a series of isolated failures.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “This government is ensuring the mistakes of the past are not repeated and is doing everything it can to put taxpayer’s money back where it belongs – in communities, the NHS, police and armed forces.
“Action to recover public money lost to Covid fraud has so far resulted in almost £400 million being returned to the public purse, and PPE suppliers referred to the National Crime Agency for investigation.
“The new Pandemic Preparedness Strategy outlines concrete action already taken across government to embed lessons from Covid-19.”